Steve Bloomer's column

Derbyshire Football Express

A HUGE increase in players' wages, higher admission prices and an economic downturn – all factors affecting football. Sound familiar? Apparently it was ever thus. Steve Bloomer was reporting similar problems 90 years ago. The great Steve Bloomer was engaged as a columnist for the paper and his views that week make particularly interesting reading.

"I do not think I need to disguise the fact that there are many grave and serious problems besetting the League clubs... in my days the highest amount a player could earn was £4 10s. Today players can be paid double that amount together with a £2 bonus if they win and a £1 if they draw."

Bloomer pointed out that when the Football League began in 1888 there were only 12 clubs in a relatively tight area of Lancashire and the Midlands, but "today travelling expenses have gone up enormously – Newcastle to Cardiff, South Shields to Bristol … such trips were never thought in the early days when the South had not taken soccer to its heart."

There was also the recession: "The country is going through an industrial crisis. I will not have it that football is losing its hold on the public fancy. But there is a great amount of unemployment... people cannot go to matches when there is no money coming in."

Steve was not downhearted, though: "There is a remedy to all evils, a solution to all problems. Football is passing through a period of stress and difficulty. It will emerge safely, rest assured."